Raptor X for Fast Rig? or other drives?

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USMC2Hard4U

Supreme [H]ardness
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Apr 4, 2003
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Should I get a Raptor X for my new Conroe Rig? Or should I go with some perpendicular drives?

its either 1 Raptor X or 2 - 250 Perpendiculars Raid 0

I dont need the space, but just wondering on performance....

ALso, NCQ on or Off for this gaming Rig?
 
Raptor X is a waste of money. Get the other drive instead or if you really want a raptor, get a regular Raptor 150gb.
 
If you don't need a lot of space, get two 36GB Raptors in RAID0 for less than a Raptor X. All the new Raptor's performance is the same now.
Raptor X is a waste of money.
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Well if you want the only drive with a window, or have lots of money, not really.
ALso, NCQ on or Off for this gaming Rig?
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Off if you get a choice.
 
I suggest the single 150, X or not. Perpendicular drives still have higher seek times, and raid 0 still has higher failure rates.

 
USMC2Hard4U said:
Or should I go with some perpendicular drives?
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While I know that my effort to explain that "perpendicular recording" is nothing more than a data-density bump similar to what we have experienced before is futile, since I am fighting against multi-million dollar marketing departments, let me just make sure:
You know that perpendicular recording has no benefits that were not present in previous data density bumps, don't you? A longitudonal recording drive with the same density ought to perform the same to the perpendicular drive, given that everything else is equal.
 
WD1500A_FD owns everything on the market right now, at least in the SATA world. Still far and away the best SATA gamer drive you can get, RAID-0 or not. Seek performance, followed by buffer performance, are still the dominant factors in determining game loading performance. Transfer rate (the only performance aspect directly enhanced by the increased density of perpendicular recording) is not much of a factor for gamers.
 
DougLite said:
WD1500A_FD owns everything on the market right now, at least in the SATA world. Still far and away the best SATA gamer drive you can get, RAID-0 or not. Seek performance, followed by buffer performance, are still the dominant factors in determining game loading performance. Transfer rate (the only performance aspect directly enhanced by the increased density of perpendicular recording) is not much of a factor for gamers.
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What about the new 36GB Drives? WD36ADFD or something like that? I dont need 150GB... I just want someting small and fast. I can always get a 500GB WD or something later if I need more room for stuff... Im primarily looking for the OS and games for speed.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
What about the new 36GB Drives? WD36ADFD or something like that? I dont need 150GB... I just want someting small and fast. I can always get a 500GB WD or something later if I need more room for stuff... Im primarily looking for the OS and games for speed.
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Depends on how many games you have loaded onto your computer. All the games I have, is over 80GB. That's just installs, nothing extra. You could just go with a 36 or 74GB drive. 74GB raptor is faster though.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
What about the new 36GB Drives? WD36ADFD or something like that? I dont need 150GB... I just want someting small and fast. I can always get a 500GB WD or something later if I need more room for stuff... Im primarily looking for the OS and games for speed.
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I would get at least the 74GB model. I have 3 or 4 games loaded on mine along with a few other apps, and I have 16% of my drive left.
Games are much larger now, 3 of the 4 I have installed take up 6GB+ of space each :(
i have the 74GB raptor.
 
USMC2Hard4U said:
What about the new 36GB Drives? WD36ADFD or something like that? I dont need 150GB... I just want someting small and fast. I can always get a 500GB WD or something later if I need more room for stuff... Im primarily looking for the OS and games for speed.
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Simply doubling the size of a drive gives 7-8% faster performance, as the data is closer together and seeks are shorter. The 36ADFD does address the mechanical deficiencies of the 360GD (when compared to it's bigger brothers), as well as introducing the 16MB buffer.
 
If you don't need a lot of space, get two 36GB Raptors in RAID0 for less than a Raptor X. All the new Raptor's performance is the same now.
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Simply doubling the size of a drive gives 7-8% faster performance, as the data is closer together and seeks are shorter.
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True, but the data is not closer together on the bigger drives. They all use the same size platter. 36GB drives uses one side of one platter, 74 uses both sides, 150 uses two platters, both sides. So get the size you need without worry of a performance advantage of one over the other.
 
tuskenraider said:
True, but the data is not closer together on the bigger drives. They all use the same size platter. 36GB drives uses one side of one platter, 74 uses both sides, 150 uses two platters, both sides. So get the size you need without worry of a performance advantage of one over the other.
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Yes, the data is closer together on a larger drive, even though in the case of the ADFD Raptors, the number of sectors per track and number of tracks per platter is not changed regardless of the capacity of the drive. However, since the number of recording surfaces is increased, seeks are shorter.

If I do a 4GB game installation, that's about 11% of a WD360ADFD's capacity, but less than 3% of a WD1500ADFD.

When seeking on a WD360ADFD, each track that the actuator moves in or out moves over one track's worth of data,a s the 360 has only one recording surface. However, on a WD1500ADFD, each track that the actuator moves over actually passes over four tracks, as the 1500 has four recording surfaces.

Given the prominence of locality on the desktop, that is a huge advantage for larger drives, and why large 7200RPM drives can compete with small 10K and 15K drives that have superior mechanics but lower density and less sophisticated buffer strategies.
 
When seeking on a WD360ADFD, each track that the actuator moves in or out moves over one track's worth of data,a s the 360 has only one recording surface. However, on a WD1500ADFD, each track that the actuator moves over actually passes over four tracks, as the 1500 has four recording surfaces.
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That makes sense. But then why is it the 150 actually shows slower seek times with the typical benchmarks(HD Tach, HD Tune)? Do you not consider these to be acurrate? Is there a better program to test seek performance? Otherwise, in those programs 36GB drives have average seeks of 7.7 to 7.9ms, while the 150GB drives are in the 8.1 to 8.4 range. In STR's I've seen maybe a 4-5MB/s advantage to the 150, but that could very well be controller/mobo related. I seem to be one of the few with the new 36GB drives posting about it's actual performance, so these are my results compared with those I've seen in various forums.
 
tuskenraider said:
That makes sense. But then why is it the 150 actually shows slower seek times with the typical benchmarks(HD Tach, HD Tune)? Do you not consider these to be acurrate? Is there a better program to test seek performance? Otherwise, in those programs 36GB drives have average seeks of 7.7 to 7.9ms, while the 150GB drives are in the 8.1 to 8.4 range. In STR's I've seen maybe a 4-5MB/s advantage to the 150, but that could very well be controller/mobo related. I seem to be one of the few with the new 36GB drives posting about it's actual performance, so these are my results compared with those I've seen in various forums.
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Remember, benchmarks do not alway mean anything in the real world. Real world performance is where it's at (although, cannot be measured by any program).
 
^^ I agree. So unless you take both drives, image them the same for a PC, and measure the time taken for various tasks, who's to say one's faster? And most likely, the differences will fall under a typical margin of error. Unfortunately, there isn't any comparison of all the sizes of the new drive at storagereview or similar site to make any assertions.
 
tuskenraider said:
That makes sense. But then why is it the 150 actually shows slower seek times with the typical benchmarks(HD Tach, HD Tune)? Do you not consider these to be acurrate? Is there a better program to test seek performance? Otherwise, in those programs 36GB drives have average seeks of 7.7 to 7.9ms, while the 150GB drives are in the 8.1 to 8.4 range. In STR's I've seen maybe a 4-5MB/s advantage to the 150, but that could very well be controller/mobo related. I seem to be one of the few with the new 36GB drives posting about it's actual performance, so these are my results compared with those I've seen in various forums.
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A 36GB drive with only one actuator arm should display better mechanical seek performance (in a synthetic test) than a 150GB drive with four arms, as one arm is lighter than four. The less weight takes less power to move at a given speed, or moves faster with a fixed amount of power. However, that is only in a synthetic test, which seeks over the entire area of the disk. Applications will seek over a much smaller space, depending on the size of the installation. The size of the installation is not affected by the size of the disc. UT2004 or a similarly large game takes the same amount of space up, regardless of what drive you put it on. However, the percentage of the drive, and the length of a typical seek, will change depending on the size of the drive.

Imagine this example:

You're looking for something in a file cabinet. How would you find it faster?

A) Have four drawers, each of them five feet long, with four people looking through them, one to each drawer?

-OR-

B) Have one drawer that is 20 feet long, with one person looking through it (once again, one to a drawer), even if that one person is faster than one of the four in example A?
 
I clearly understand. Now besides in theory that the 150 should be faster, there just doesn't seem to be any tests showing this is true, and by how much. So you don't think a statement saying you can expect the same performance in a typical desktop out of all the different capacities of these drives? I'm thinking the margin too small to make a claim that one is really gonna be better than another.
 
Certainly not worth the extra price premium of the bigger drive :p

I doubt 36GB is enough nowadays for a gamer. That might hold 10 recent games, if you're lucky.

On ZZF right now, the WD360ADFD is $111, the 74 is $151, and the 150 is $223. Two 36's is the same price as one 150. I'd be inclined to take the extra capacity and more efficient packaging if I was buying, although having multiple spindles can be useful in some scenarios.

Every hard drive purchase decision should be carefully evaluated from many angles. At least I think so :p
 
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